The Norman door was a powerful example for me, as it emphasises that the user is not the problem but the push door with the handle is the problem.

And if you’re designing the door, it is your responsibility to think deeply and observe behaviour, to design an intuitive interface.

I do agree that it’s rather academic, but I did leave with that one takeaway.

Yeah, I think the moral of the story is if your company is not good at technology AI does not magically make you good at technology.

The company needs to have the right culture and ability to integrate leading technology, whatever it is.

These smaller companies are doing well, they just aren’t incentivised to tell you about it. The VC backed companies are, either targeting you as a consumer or an investor and n an eventual IPO.

Finding the right psychologist/coach/founder to chat this over with will probably do you and the company wonders.

Hey, author here. Totally agree on how helpful these people are. I have a psychologist and also some great mentors. This doesn't make you immune to things like I wrote about but helps you process and get over them when they happen.

As a side note, I'm in a much better mental space now, largely due to facing these things straight on. Things are good, and I'm motivated and sharp!

Awesome to hear. Best of luck!

You are describing a top 2pct experience.

Because the likes of Altman have set short term expectations unrealistically high.

I mean that's every tech company.

I made a joke once after the first time I watched one of those Apple announcement shows in 2018, where I said "it's kind of sad, because there won't be any problems for us to solve because the iPhone XS Max is going to solve all of them".

The US economy is pretty much a big vibes-based Ponzi scheme now, so I don't think we can single-out AI, I think we have to blame the fact that the CEOs running these things face no negative consequences for lying or embellishing and they do get rewarded for it because it will often bump the stock price.

Is Tesla really worth more than every other car company combined in any kind of objective sense? I don't think so, I think people really like it when Elon lies to them about stuff that will come out "next year", and they feel no need to punish him economically.

"Ponzi" requires records fraud and is popularly misused, sort of like if people started describing every software bug as "a stack overflow."

I'd rather characterize it as extremes of Greater Fool Theory.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greater_fool_theory

I would argue it’s fraud-adjacent. These tech CEOs know that they’re not going to be able to keep the promises that they’re making. It’s dishonest at the very least, if it doesn’t legally constitute “fraud”.

I maintain that most anti-AI sentiment is actually anti-lying-tech-CEO sentiment misattributed.

The technology is neat, the people selling it are ghouls.

Exactly: the technology is useful but because the executive class is hyping it as close to AGI because their buddies are slavering for layoffs. If that “when do you get fired?” tone wasn’t behind the conversation, I think a lot of people would be interested in applying LLMs to the smaller subset of things they actually perform well at.

For me it's mostly about the subset of things that LLMs suck at but still rammed in everywhere because someone wants to make a quick buck.

I know it's good tech for some stuff, just not for everything. It's the same with previous bubbles. VR is really great for some things but we were never going to work with a headset on 8 hours a day. Bitcoin is pretty cool but we were never going to do our shopping list on Blockchain. I'm just so sick of hypes.

But I do think it's good tech, just like I enjoy VR daily I do have my local LLM servers (I'm pretty anti cloud so I avoid it unless I really need the power)

It's not really about the societal impacts for me, at least not yet, it's just not good enough for that yet. I do worry about that longer-term but not with the current generation of AI. At my work we've done extensive benchmarking (especially among enthusiastic early adopters) and while it can save a couple hours a week we're nowhere near the point where it can displace FTEs.

Yeah, I think those are coming from the same place: so many companies are trying to wedge LLMs into everything, especially contexts where you really need actual reasoning to accomplish a task, and it’s just such a “magic VC money fairy, pick us!” play that it distracts from the underlying tech opening up some text processing capabilities we would’ve thought were amazing a few years ago.

Maybe CEOs should face consequences for going on the stage and outwardly lying. Instead they're rewarded by a bump in stock price because people appear to have amnesia.

This is how I felt about Bitcoin.

I hate the Anthropic guy so much.. when I see the face it just brings back all the nonsense lies and "predictions" he says. Altman is kind of the same but for some reason Dario kind of takes the cake.

This is not correct. For starters, loans are assets.

Banks start with some capital, borrow in the form of deposits, and lend in the form of bonds, mortgages etc.

The regulatory capital ratio determines how much capital they must hold to support the assets.

> The regulatory capital ratio determines how much capital they must hold to support the assets.

That's one of the factors. But even in jurisdictions without regulations on capital ratio, banks tend to hold capital cushions.

The Scottish 'free banking' era in the 18th and 19th century is instructive here. (Canada had a similar arrangement.) In Scotland during that time banks regularly had about 2/3 deposits and 1/3 capital to finance their balance sheet, despite no fixed regulatory obligations on capital ratios.

Interestingly they barely held any reserves at all, perhaps 2% or less of assets.

These banks were extraordinarily solid and stable. And the arrangement contributed to Scotland's rapid catching up to England during their Industrial Revolutions.

The best way to understand a loan is as the right to a future income stream (principal repayments and interest). The original debtor (the person/entity taking out the loan) establishes the credibility of that future income stream (based on income, expected returns on a project, etc) and sells it to the lender (usually a bank) for cash up front. Thus the loan is an asset on the bank's balance sheet, that is generating returns (assuming all goes to plan). Banks can and usually do sell on that asset to other parties.

Conversely, when you deposit cash to a bank, you are actually creating a liability on the bank's balance sheet - as you might want your money back one day!

For every debt there's a debtor and a debtee. For the first debt is a liability, while it's an asset for the second.

I don't understand the point you're making.

All kind of assets can lose value overnight, be it stocks or real estate.

Lending on no reserve secretly doubles the money supply, sometimes even more if repackaged multiple times. It creates a highly risky financial environment that taxpayers inevitably are forced to bailout (usually through layoffs and hyperinflation). Time and time again.

It's crazy how far you just tried to change the subject. At first you were claiming loans aren't assets, which is uncontroversially wrong. Now you're claiming lending creates money, which is a completely different statement, and uncontroversially true

The distinction is originality vs replicating existing.

I believe the author is in the former camp.

I understand that the market in the UK is particularly tough now, across many sectors.

Is there a particular specialisation you have, and then how does someone who needs that specialisation find you?

Particularly if the job is 100pct remote, you’re participating in a global market.

Or if there’s a local company that needs you… even if the work isn’t the most challenging… Can at least leverage the real-world relationships? Anyone at prior jobs who can help with connections? (Never hurts to ask).

I hope you are able to find something that provides at least an emotional boost while the broader search continues!

> Is there a particular specialisation you have, and then how does someone who needs that specialisation find you?

Being a generalist and having experience delivering products all the way its what makes me stand out. That being said, I've done some cool pieces with backoffices and dev tooling and developer experience

> Or if there’s a local company that needs you… even if the work isn’t the most challenging… Can at least leverage the real-world relationships? Anyone at prior jobs who can help with connections? (Never hurts to ask).

I've done my best and decided to take any job even if it doesn't pay as much. I have exhausted all of my prior connections

Thanks for the good wishes